Buck Parvin and the Movies

Front matter

BUCK PARVIN AND THE MOVIES STORIES OF THE MOVING PICTURE GAME

BY CHARLES E. VAN LOAN

INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

Let's go! Let's go!

LET'S GO! LET'S GO! BY GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

Van Loan first lived, then wrote, his stories. His heroes were his friends—the best ever; his villains were his enemies—the worst. They were never hearsay heroes or villains. He had met them all in the flesh and it was not until he knew them like a book that he put them in one.

Van wrote of baseball as a lifelong fan;, of golf with the sincerity of one who never allowed unfinished business to interfere with the unfinished game; of prize-fighting only after following the champ, through long weeks of training and thence into the arena; of horse-racing as a keen observer of the sport from the stable to the betting ring; and of the pictures from personal knowledge of their every phase, including the law-suit that almost every author has had with some producer.

If a man is in any sense the sum total of his heredity, the ancestors of many writers must have led singularly dull lives. Van's forebears, on the contrary, were an unusually busy lot—prominent cavemen, from whom the prehistoric Bolsheviki instinctively shied away; well-known Aryan chiefs, who threw the spear with uncanny precision; hardy Vikings, blue-eyed and red-headed, who were always ready in their simple tenth-century way for a fight or a frolic; leading crusaders, who were continually on the jump for a dragon to slay or a lady to rescue; and restless, dauntless pioneers, always pushing Westward until they came up against the Pacific. First and last Van's ancestors must have met every one and have done everything worth while, from the days when they were happy, innocent troglodytes on up. Van himself used all their experiences and emotions in his stories—their loves, their hates, their generosities, their meannesses, their fights, their strugglings up—but most of all their splendid cleanness. For Van, too, lived a man's life and wrote man stuff. Love and sex get small place in his stories. Most men who have a clean punch in their fists have a clean punch in their hearts, too; but Van's wife is the only woman who knows anything about that side of him.

I first met Van some years ago when the moving-pictures were young and a trifle smudgy-faced. During a visit to Los Angeles, I was struck with the possibilities of this new field for the fiction writer. But when I looked up Van with the idea of suggesting a series of stories to him, I found that he had anticipated me. For months he had been on "the lot" and had been admitted to full fellowship with every one on it, from the extra men to the directors. In fact he was all over the lot, appraising the values of custard-pie drama for fiction, probing the holiest emotions and the make-up of the he-dolls; lazying around and swapping stories with the extra men, giving his long wolf howl in the mob scenes, and looming vaguely through the smoke while the Battle of Gettysburg raged around him and the director, or while heroic firemen carried beautiful, helpless ladies out of burning buildings. Day after day, week after week, he lived the pictures until he knew them and the picture people. Then he wrote this book.

For the last six months of his life Van was one of my associates in editorial work. Out of his own knowledge, experience and understanding—for no one knew better the theory of short-story writing—he gave freely to every young writer who needed a hand up. But though that association was a pleasant one, I like best to remember the days when we were out-of-doors together at the Grand Canyon. Van needed a mountain, a horizon-meeting desert or a canyon to set him off and give him room to play. At the Grand Canyon one can walk a few hundred yards in any direction from the hotel and find himself in a great pine forest, or a pathless desert, or the solitudes of the Canyon itself. It was there we met for a fortnight once or twice a year.

Van's coming always made itself felt far down the line beyond Williams, when the trainmen began dropping back to the smoker to hear him talk. Last year a brakeman called up to me from a station platform: "Van went through yesterday on number three," and a little later our conductor stopped and, smiling reminiscently, exclaimed: "That Van Loan is sure a case!"

Baron Brant, the Hopis, the Navajos and all the old-timers were usually at the station to meet him, and as the train pulled in his long wolf howl went up in greeting. Then some way the Canyonside, that had been drowsing in its hushed, age-long way, woke up for an hour, with Van getting acquainted again and apparently in twenty places all at once. Over at Hopi house the drums beat louder and the Navajos danced more furiously; down at the corral the guides yelled their welcome; in the hotel lobby the Baron alternately beamed at Van's affectionate epithet, "miserable old man," and winced under the heavy hand of his friend; from the floor above, dignified old Thomas Moran, irreverently dubbed Kid Moran by Van, left for a moment the picture that he was painting; and along the rim the tourists received priceless, if somewhat fanciful, information in reply to their questions.

A tourist on the Canyon's rim, A simple tourist was to him, And nothing more.

Alas I even as he talked to them Van was sizing up some rock that was balanced temptingly over the abyss, for he had a vice. He liked to roll rocks and, unless he was watched, he rolled them. Once out beyond Desert View, forty miles up the Canyon, where there was no danger of "beaning" an inoffensive tourist below, he triumphantly disclosed a crowbar that he had hidden under the carriage robe, and spent a pleasant afternoon working with my two boys to dislodge a rock that was as big as a piano. They were an hour putting it over, but what a noble smash it made, and how it did roll down that five thousand feet, and what a long wolf howl of triumph Van let out as it toppled over the rim! Perhaps all this will make the judicious grieve, but then grieving is the best and about the only thing the judicious do.

Half the time Van was an overgrown boy—playing around like a shaggy, lumbering, barking, pawing puppy. But when he was in a grown-up mood he was a man all over. This side of him came out on the long walks, when he talked in his vivid, forceful way about men and books and affairs; or on the hard all-day rides down in the Canyon, when there was so much to see that we talked little; or in the evenings on the rim and in the camp below, when night spread through the Canyon and finally covered the glowing sky above.

There is something very positive about the desert country. One likes it or dislikes it; but no one is ever indifferent to it. Van loved it; and it was his oft-expressed hope that the further development of the Canyon would never fall into the hands of anyone who did not love it, too—that it would always be safeguarded from those who would jazz it and exploit it and Coney Islandize any corner of it in the name of improvement. That would be like slapping God on the wrist.

Last summer I went back to the Canyon and everyone talked a good deal about Van—that is, everyone except the Baron. At first he looked at me a little mistily, and I think he was recalling the last time when Van was there, too, slapping him on the back and jovially greeting him as a "miserable old man." I wished that I could make him beam and wince again in the old way, before he began to shake hands decorously with his rather conventional guests, but that was "Van's stuff." So I shook hands like any proper tourist and went out to the rim, where a very learned gentleman with a very correct New England ancestry was expounding the theory and geology of the Canyon to a group of interested hearers. I have never met anyone with a more absolutely faultless manner. He both explained and apologized for the Canyon's crudities in one breath. I rather gathered that he would have found the geology of the Alps more to his liking, if certain events had not made them temporarily inaccessible to American tourists of refinement. I do not think that Van had very much geology, but I felt as I listened that he had known the Canyon in a way that the learned Easterner would never know it. Doubtless his unimpeachably correct ancestry went back through libraries and monasteries and temples to a cultured cave home, while Van's ancestors spent their lives preparing for descendants who would be good Americans when the time came; and Van was one hundred per cent American. That may explain why he hated poor sports, parlor Bolsheviki and quitters; and why mountains, canyons, deserts and men took precedence in his mind over books about them. One man sees strata where another man sees God.

Turn the page and you will find Van in his book.

Let's Go! Let's Go!

The Extra Man and the Milkfed Lion

THE EXTRA MAN AND THE MILKFED LION

WHEN Tommy Dennis began to love the beautiful and talented Myrtle Manners he was an Arab trader squatting in the shade of a date-palm, and she was a Christian maiden—a captive in the harem of Sheik Abdallah, the Scourge of the Sahara.

When first he saw her face at the barred window, lovely in spite of the fear and grief it depicted, Tommy was conscious of a sudden delightful shock that fluttered to the tips of his fingers and toes; and when she stretched out her arms and wept, every sob went straight to Tommy's susceptible heart.

He held his breath as he watched her make a perilous descent from the roof of the harem by means of a rope ladder furnished by a faithless slave, the same who later paid for his treachery to his cruel master, the sheik, by being hurled from that very roof upon the spears of the tribe.

Tommy Dennis was among those present when the beautiful stranger fled from the sheik's oasis on Sharkey, the trained camel; and he murmured a brief but fervent prayer that the ungainly brute might not stumble. After a fashion of his own the Scourge of the Sahara offered up the same supplication—but it was Sharkey's lame foreleg he was thinking of, and not the neck of the Christian maiden. Camels are expensive beasts, requiring time and patience in training; and Abdallah, besides being a sheik and a scourge, was also heavy actor and producing director for the Titan Company and, as such, responsible for its animal stuff.

Later, as a wild Bedouin, armed with a bell-muzzled weapon and mounted upon a milk-white steed that manifested true Arabic love for its master by biting him severely upon the knee-cap. Tommy scoured the plain in pursuit of the lumbering Sharkey, again securing fleeting glimpses of the lovely stranger as she clung desperately to the camel's saddle. Sharkey's footwork was very erratic, consisting of two speeds forward, one sidewise and an abrupt reverse.

After several spirited sprints over dunes and across dry river bottoms, all of which Sharkey managed to win by a neck under shrill protest, the Bedouins, led by Sheik Abdallah, engaged in mortal combat with French troops—and Tommy Dennis was shot dead at the first fire. He did not mind this at all, being used to it; but he was very much annoyed at his Arab steed for kicking him as he fell. Neither were his feelings soothed to any great extent by alighting heavily upon the belled muzzle of his ancient weapon.

Tommy was resurrected in a short blue jacket, which puckered abominably under the arms, and motheaten red trousers several sizes too small for him—a private in the corporal's guard and an eyewitness to the affecting reunion of the lovers inside the French lines, the sandy river bottom doing duty as the Desert of Sahara.

He saw the beautiful Christian maiden fall fainting from Sharkey's back into the arms of her sweetheart, a tall, handsome fellow in the uniform of a captain of the Foreign Legion—he who had just slain the wicked Abdallah in a thrilling encounter with cavalry sabers, it being well known that a sheik never fights with anything else if he can help it.

Tommy was not pleased with the ardent manner in which the gallant officer clasped the limp and yielding form to his bosom and pressed the parted lips with a neatly waxed mustache and imperial. The late Abdallah was not pleased either, judging by his comment. "That was rotten!" he shouted. "No good at all! Myrtle, you forgot to register a recognition before you pulled the fall. Jack, you cloaked the best part of the action with your shoulder when you ran in. Do it again, and try to get some real feeling into it—if you know how."

"Oooo-issch!" sneezed the long-suffering Sharkey, nipping the director upon the arm.

"Ouch!" yelled Mr. Abdallah, whose other name was Jimmy Montague. "Get that fool brute back where he belongs! Now then, all set, Myrtle? Take up a few feet of waste on that film.... Ready—action—go!... What's the matter with that infernal camel! Come on with him!... Look down at Jack, Myrtle!... Now fall!... Oh, hold her close to you, man! That's something like it!... Well, it went better that time, but it's still rotten in spots. Throw out your arms when you fall, Myrtle. Don't flop down like a sack of meal. And sprinkle some water here—Sharkey kicks up an awful dust when he stops quick."

Seven times the beautiful maiden fell into the arms of her beloved before the Scourge of the Sahara announced himself as satisfied, and Sharkey was led away, bubbling and gurgling with rage and indignation. Seven times Tommy Dennis stood stiffly in the corporal's guard, blushing behind his makeup, trembling in every fiber of his being.

This was the lady of his dreams; he had found her at last. What difference did it make to Tommy's fluttering heart that she was the Queen of the Movies, at a salary of one hundred dollars a week, and he but a despised extra man at three dollars a day? Cupid, careless little rascal with his bow and arrow, might take the blame for that. Tommy had found her—that was the main thing—and having found her he was forced to endure seeing her kissed back to consciousness by a supercilious person who wore a handkerchief in his cuff and addressed all extra men as "Here, you!" Tommy had not liked the handsome leading man any too well to begin with. He loathed him now.

It was a slight source of comfort to note the businesslike way in which the young woman freed herself from Jack La Rue's embraces the instant the camera man's hand ceased to move. Tommy also observed that at the finish of the scene she walked away toward the temporary dressing tent, without so much as a word or a glance behind her.

"I'll bet she doesn't like him!" thought Tommy, with a swift fluttering sensation under the blue coat. Then later: "I don't see how any nice girl could!"

Tommy Dennis was twenty—he stood six feet in his stockings ; his nose was straight; his eyes were clear; and, better than all else, his heart was clean. He knew as soon as he saw Myrtle Manners at the barred window of Abdallah's harem that he had never really loved before. He realized that his high-school affairs, which had seemed so serious at the time, were but the silly flirtations of childhood; and the brief but burning passion for the lunch-counter waitress was a youthful indiscretion. By the same process of reasoning he was not more than seven minutes in convincing himself that he would never love again.

When one is twenty it is easy to believe that true love is the only real thing in the world, and fame and fortune but the tinsel stage settings for the One Big Scene, in which the right man plays opposite the right woman forever, and there are no makeovers, no cut-ins and no fogged films.

He wondered as he discarded the dusty uniform of the Legion and washed the paint from his face whether she had noticed him at all. He decided that it was within the range of possibility. He recalled that she was standing behind the camera when the Bedouins swept yelling upon the French outpost. She must have seen the rider who plunged from his saddle at the first volley; and on the whole he was rather glad that his horse had kicked him. It was the sort of thing to draw the spectator's attention. He ceased to regret the bruise on his hip where he had fallen upon his gun. She might have seen that he was painfully hurt as he limped away—might even have been sorry for him. A bruised hip was a small price to pay for a pitying glance from those soft brown eyes. He pictured her as asking questions about him and receiving truthful replies:

"Who is that good-looking young man over there—the one who made such a daring fall?'

"That is Tom Dennis, quite an unusual sort of an extra man. He is a fearless chap; never stops at anything when it comes to making a good picture. He's going to be a great stunt actor some day—that boy."

Tommy was recalled from a dream of imaginary conversation by some of the genuine article close at hand. Buck Parvin was speaking. Buck was a moving-picture cowpuncher, acting during every waking moment. His street costume consisted of a widebrimmed hat of gray felt, a blue flannel shirt, a red bandanna for a cravat, a leather vest thickly studded with shining disks of brass, lavender trousers tucked into highheeled boots; and on special occasions he wore angora chaps and enormous spurs, which tinkled musically as he walked. His hatband was made of rattlesnake skin, and distributed about his person he wore several pounds of Indian beadwork and Mexican silver jewelry. Buck Parvin was one character actor who never left his makeup in the dressing room at the end of the day's work, having, as he said, but three complete changes of wardrobe—put on, take off and go without.

"Well, kid," said Buck, "what do you think of the new leading lady? Quite a doll, ain't she? Pretty soft for that big stiff. La Rue! I'd like to have his job for about a week. I bet ole Jimmy Montague wouldn't have to bawl me out for not huggin' her hard enough. I'd play that scene for nothing. Yes, sir! Myrtle is certainly some dolly!"

"Aw, put the diffuser on that kind of talk!" growled Tommy. "You've got an awful nerve calling her by her first name."

"Oho!" chuckled Buck. "You kind of like her your own self, don't you, kid? I reckon you'll be round here to-morrow acting all over the place. Maybe they'll have a makeover on some of them chases and you'll get a chance to pull another phony fall. Take it from me, Tommy, throw away that slide-trombone of a gun next time, unless you want to bust yourself plumb in two. And lemme tell you something else: Whenever you're on the ground, with horses coming behind you, lay still! They'll all jump over you. You began to crawl and ole Pieface just missed you by an inch."

"Darn it!" said Tommy. "I wasn't crawling; I had to get off that gun."

"Now if you want to catch the lady's eye," said Buck mischievously, "do a real fall! I got mine—right in the eye of the camera too. I thumbed ole Pieface in the neck and he went straight up like he was goin' over backward; an' I slid off him as easy as rolling out of bed. Not a bruise on me. And, believe me, the lady seen me do it; she was lookin' right at me!"

"You make me tired!" said Tommy, grinning in spite of himself. "I fell like a man that was shot."

"You limped like it too," said Buck with a chuckle. "We both of us might have broke our necks and it wouldn't have made any difference. You and me ain't got a Chinaman's chance for a pleasant look from her! They won't be no extry men in Myrtle's picture a-tall. None whatever! If she's going to fall for anybody round here it'll be La Rue."

"I don't believe it," said Tommy stubbornly. "Why, she hardly speaks to him."

"Listen at our banty rooster crow!" mocked Buck. "Tommy, you're a lovely little feller, and I like you; but there's a whole lot you don't know about women. Yes, when it comes to females I should say you was consid'able ignorant. Let your Uncle Buck steer you. He's a pretty wise Injun on this skirt thing."

"Huh!" snorted Tommy. "What do you know about women?"

"Everything," said Buck calmly. "Everything what is. I ought to. Women have throwed me higher in the air than you've ever been away from home. Tommy. Yes, sir; they cert'n'y had their fun with ole Buck—but he got a line on 'em, you bet! Take it from me, it's the dough that counts with the dolls—the dinero; the iron men; the large, smilin' yaller boys. We ain't got no bankroll, Tommy, and we're safe. The camera ain't focused on us at all—see? We're way over yonder on the other side of the hill, plumb out of the picture. As soon as this jane finds out that La Rue drags down one-fifty a week, she's goin' to go ropin' for him."

"Pshaw!" said Tommy. "The trouble with you, Buck, is that you haven't met the right kind of women."

"I ain't, hey?" demanded Parvin, as he fastened his bandanna with the huge silver ring set with turquoise matrices. "Oh, no; I suppose not. There's the women what likes you and there's the women what don't; and they're the only kinds what is. Take it from me, I've met a many of both varieties—an' they was all out for the dough."

II

Love at first sight is a beautiful theory; but in every-day life there is such a thing as taking a long critical second look. Tommy took several, and each time he saw Myrtle Manners in a new part he discovered added charms. An extra man may look at a moving-picture queen if he has the luck to be selected by the director for a day's work.

Each morning Tommy reported faithfully at the Titan headquarters, and when Jimmy Montague crooked his forefinger and said, "I want you, kid!" that day was ringed on Tommy's calendar with a circle of gold. When the director shook his head and said, "Nothing doing!" Tommy slouched away, with his lower lip drooping and his hands crammed deep in his pockets, a picture of blighted hope.

As the Cattle Queen, in sombrero and short riding skirt, Miss Manners captivated Tommy by her dash and daring in the saddle, and even Buck Parvin admitted that she "sat up in the middle of a hawss" like a cattle queen born. As the brave but heartbroken hospital nurse in the Civil War picture, All for Dixie, she plumbed unsuspected depths of sentiment; but when she played the deserted wife and mother in The Cashier's Disgrace, and wept over the borrowed baby, she touched Tommy in his tenderest spot. He was all hers from that moment.

Then came the wonderful day when she spoke to him. The performers had gone out "on a location" to the outskirts of the city and had been delayed beyond the noon hour. Tommy volunteered to find the nearest restaurant and bring back food.

"Two ham sandwiches and a pint of milk, please," was what she said to him; but Tommy walked in a daze for the rest of the day.

He read a dozen meanings into that innocent remark and was pleased with every one of them.

An actor employed by the Titan Company and working under Director Jimmy Montague had no sinecure. Montague had a reputation as a producer of sensational film dramas. He spent his nights in thinking up new and thrilling stunts for his actors to perform, and in devising scenarios to fit the stunts.

Jimmy's people never knew, when they reported for work on a new picture, whether they would be required to leap off a cliff into forty feet of water, go up in a balloon or track a real lion to the camera's eye. Montague's leading man had to box like a Corbett, wrestle like a Muldoon, ride like a Cody, swim like a fish, climb crags like a goat, dress like a Brummel, make love like a Sothern, and face wild animals like a—Colonel.

Jimmy's specialty was animal stuff. After his tremendous success with The King of Beasts—a three-reel production that appeared in nearly every country under the sun and yielded a dollar harvest which remains a record to this day—the Titan owners saw a great light and began to invest in wild animals.

They had objected when Jimmy insisted on buying a mangy, toothless lion for use in a single production; the poor old brute turned out to be the most profitable investment the company had ever made, paying some eight thousand per cent. With one lion as a nucleus the Titan people rapidly acquired quite a respectable menagerie, and Jimmy Montague's animal stuff became known from St. Petersburg to Tasmania.

There was Selim, the elephant—a star in The Rajah's Revenge and The Heart of Hindustan. Selim was a Hamburg-trained pachyderm, with a fair working knowledge of the German language and a painstaking attention to detail that made him a remarkable moving-picture actor. No desert scene was complete without the camels—Sharkey, Old Blue, Betsy and Mame—unwilling but efficient performers. The lions—King, Duke, Bertha and Babe—had thrilled audiences all over the world; and the monkeys, wolves, snakes, coyotes, elk, deer, hyenas, and the nearsighted comedy tapir, also contributed their bit to the entertainment of the masses.

Every time Sam Packard, the purchasing agent, had a chance to buy a wild animal he snapped it up and looked confidently to Jimmy Montague to invent a scenario to fit the creature.

One morning Montague received a telegram from the head of the firm in New York.

"Jungle stuff worked to death," it read. "Get new scenario quick. Use all animals."

"There's gratitude for you," growled Jimmy as he tossed the telegram to Jack La Rue, who happened to be present. "How the deuce can I ring in lions and elephants and camels without a jungle scenario?"

"Blest if I know!" said La Rue, lighting a cigarette. "You never see 'em anywhere else except in a circus, and2"

"Bully boy!" shouted Montague. "Great suggestion, Jack!"

"What suggestion?" demanded the amazed leading man.

"Why, the circus!" said Jimmy. "It's never been done. We'll make a circus picture and it'll be a knockout!"

"You're a wizard, Jimmy!" said La Rue. "Give you a toothpick to start with and you'll have a lumberyard in ten minutes. How do you do it?"

Jimmy Montague pressed three buttons. The stenographer was first to appear.

"Send a telegram to the house in New York and ask 'em if they've got any stock films of circus parades. Get that off quick! That parade stuff will do fine for cut-ins," said Montague.

Ben Leslie, the property man, and Joe Bates, in charge of the wardrobe department, entered together.

"Joe," said the director, "Jack here wants some silk fleshings—full tights; white or pink will do. Manners ought to be a bareback rider, I suppose—no; hold on. Maybe we can't get anybody to double for her in a real riding act. I've got it! Why not make her a lion tamer? The very thing! Joe, get Manners a Spanish outfit and a lion-tamer's whip. I'll need some ringmaster's boots. That's all I can think of now; but it's enough to get busy on. I'll give you a list later."

"Goin' to do a circus picture?" asked Ben Leslie. Ben was a lean, saturnine individual, as remarkable a personage in his way as any member of the company. Had he been ordered to produce the Kohinoor immediately he would have nodded twice, shifted his fine-cut from one cheek to the other and gone out without a word. And he would have brought back the Kohinoor—or the next best thing. Nothing surprised him; nothing daunted him.

"Yes," said Jimmy Montague, "we're going to do a circus picture. Get busy on it, quick! Ward Brothers' Circus is wintering down at Santa Monica. You can borrow a lot of junk from them. You know Billy Ward, don't you?"

"Sure!" said Ben. "Worked for him once."

"Gee-whiz!" said Montague. "Is there anybody in the world you haven't worked for—once?"

"Reckon not," said Ben, and departed.

"This will be some scenario!" remarked Jimmy to his leading man.

In his brilliant mind the toothpick was already expanding into a telegraph pole; the lumberyard would come later.

"Yes, but I don't get you," said La Rue. "What am I supposed to be in this picture? An acrobat!"

"Bareback rider," said Jimmy succinctly. "In love with the lion tamer. So am I. I'm the ringmaster. We can work up a lot of jealousy stuff. I crab your act. Hit your horse with the whip when you go to do a jump-up. You fake a fall—all that 'Cur-rse you, Jack Dalton!' business. I ain't got it straightened out, yet, of course; but for the blowoff Myrtle's lion-taming stunt goes wrong, I get cold feet, and you tear in and save the lady. Ain't that great?"